Looking for ideas for new wellness programs?

When you are responsible for delivering an exciting wellness program to employees, one of the key challenges is keeping the programs fresh over time. That’s not easy, by any stretch. Many wellness professionals spend considerable time looking for new ideas, new ways to engage people in their health, new topics, and more convenient formats.

As someone who oversaw the wellness programs and platform functionality for an end-to-end wellness solution for 7 years, my job was to keep things interesting for hundreds of clients and their employees.

I didn’t want to rely on gimmicky technology or trendy features. Gimmicks only engage people for a short time. Then people get bored and want some other shiny new thing. Gimmicky stuff always over-promises and under-delivers, and that’s not why I got into wellness.

I believed programs should be practical and speak from the heart, and also easy to implement and use. By and large, though, there aren’t a lot of compelling, plug-and-play programs out there. There are lots of free-standing consumer apps and expensive platforms, but not a lot of convenient, high-quality programming.

Fortunately, I started looking closely at the power of audio programming. A surprising number of people are listening to podcasts now. And those who aren’t hooked on them yet at least know what podcasts are. (Awareness and adoption have surged just in the past few years alone.)

When participants put their ear buds in, they enter the Theater of the Mind. And that’s where the potential for great programming lies. The experience of an audio program is much different than any other format, including video.

These days, I am on a mission to explore the potential of on-demand audio and branded wellness podcasts for corporate wellness. I like to think of audio as untethered from the device screen. Participants can turn it on, listen, and go about their business.

I encourage you to start thinking about ways audio can deliver a unique, powerful experience in your wellness initiative. Audio programs (outside wellness) have been around since the days of early radio and are more popular than ever with mobile podcasting. Listening has stood the test of time. Audio provides the space for a lot of experimentation and innovation in wellness programming. Together, let’s see what unique experiences we can bring our participants.

– Greg Juhn

Go Well programs come with posters, emails, promotional materials and assessment questions – everything you need to deliver a successful program to your participants. For more info, send me a note here.